How long did the Kasongo-Lunda fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 July 2026 and 12 July 2026: 12 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,769 hectares (77.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kasongo-Lunda (7,825 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Congo - Kinshasa (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CD · Congo - Kinshasa · 2026-07-01 → 2026-07-12

Kasongo-Lunda fire, 1 July 2026 Kasongo-Lunda

Out · last detection 10 Jul 2026, 12:42 UTC

The fire started on 1 July 2026 in Kasongo-Lunda, Congo - Kinshasa, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,769 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 77th largest in Kwango since 2016 (of 219 with a page). Number 265 in Congo - Kinshasa in 2026, of 523.

Burnt area: 7,769ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 1 Jul 2026 – 12 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; territories
Started on: 1 Jul; 2026
Heat detections: 195; in a single hotspot: 116 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Energy released: 1.7GW; sum of detected power

Play back 10 Jul 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Jul12 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

1245678910

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high

40km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 41 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,620 ha in 2016, 3,712 ha in 2017, 3,808 ha in 2018, 1,560 ha in 2019, 2,571 ha in 2020, 3,923 ha in 2021, 1,630 ha in 2022, 250 ha in 2023, 2,370 ha in 2024, 393 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,445 ha that had burned before.

188 ha Kasongo-Lunda fire, July 2017 7,857 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Kasongo-Lunda where it started

7,825 ha reached on 25 Jun

0.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
1 Jul	30.8 °C	27 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
2 Jul	30.3 °C	31 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
3 Jul	30.6 °C	32 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
4 Jul	32.3 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
5 Jul	31.4 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
6 Jul	31.5 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
7 Jul	30.8 °C	22 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
8 Jul	29.5 °C	28 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
9 Jul	30.3 °C	27 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
10 Jul	30.7 °C	25 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
11 Jul	29.9 °C	28 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
12 Jul	31.2 °C	24 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
13 Jul after	31.8 °C	19 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
14 Jul after	31.3 °C	21 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
15 Jul after	30.6 °C	28 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
16 Jul after	29.4 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 39
17 Jul after	29.8 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
18 Jul after	29.8 °C	19 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
19 Jul after	29.8 °C	23 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
20 Jul after	27.9 °C	38 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
21 Jul after	28.2 °C	43 %	18 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
22 Jul after	31.8 °C	23 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

↔

Before · 24 Jun 2026

After · 19 Jul 2026

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 9 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 172 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 112: 7.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak172 µg/m³

Days over the guideline17 days

PM10179 µg/m³

Optical depth1.51

WHO 15

2930123456789101112131415

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 195Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.

⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.

Date and time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Congo - Kinshasa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kasongo-Lunda fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 July 2026 and 12 July 2026: 12 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,769 hectares (77.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kasongo-Lunda (7,825 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Congo - Kinshasa (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

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Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.

Where it burned